A Closer Look At The Phantom Pain’s Snake-Like Character

Moby Dick Studio—who may not actually be Swedish as they claim—have released the first official screenshots of The Phantom Pain, strongly suspected to be a Metal Gear Solid game. All of the screens are from the game’s recent trailer (above) that premiered at the 2012 Video Game Awards. Take a look at them below:

Interesing my first time finally seeing what this was about, but why is the character so old and such. Regardless, will they keep teasing this all the way through e3 of the next year :/ or perhaps at some beginning of the year unveiling event of the ps4 to highlight its abilities…

Nitraion

O-o Moby dick studios wat?
I highly suspect Kojima behind this mess…

Chusayin

It’s an stunt, the ‘snake looking guy’ IS snake, the one with the bandages around his face is almost certainly the one from the ground zeroes trailer with the scars. more evidence: Go onto the official site for moby dick studios, there is almost no other information about them apart from the name of the CEO: Joakim mogren, joakim is an anagram of kojima. moreover, look carefully at the end title text, there are small little dashes and lines; fill the negative space in between them with the words “Metal Gear Solid V” and it fits.

Brandon001

bruh, this has been established already if you didnt know

ShawnOtakuSomething

kid Psycho Mantis appears twice,

http://twitter.com/AuroraXIII AuroraXIII

Except Big Boss never lost his arm though.

http://www.facebook.com/progozin Paul Rogozin

There not too many polygons on main characters for ps3 or xbox and original screenshots on site – have resolution ps Vita. So – metal gear solid V. where V – vita.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

These screenshots are 1280x720px. The Moby Dick website also clearly mentions Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on it. I don’t know why you people do this to yourselves.

Lexaus_the_Alchemist

To counter, there have been some screens from today floating around at 960×540 resolution…

But, yea, too much mystery floating around for anything (other than what they’ve shared) to stick.

Innocent until proven guilty, as they say.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

Well, if it’s a Vita game, naturally Vita owners will have reason to be very happy. I just don’t see the point of—for the umpteenth time—assuming a game is for Vita “just because”. It’s happened more times than I can count by now, and when people are disappointed, they bring their fury into the comments.

I do think there are other possible reasons this game could be for Vita, but screenshot resolution is not one of them. :P

Lexaus_the_Alchemist

I totally agree, but I’m just fanning the flames for shits and giggles. =3

Only Kojima could troll people to this extent…

Brandon001

lmao

Tales_of_Master

For anyone who doesn’t know how Joakim look, this is his picture taken from his official Twitter account……..LOL XD

They’re pulling the “One of them is a phantom” thing, and it’s likely that we’re going to see both accounts being trolls until one of them is eventually revealed as the account to follow for actual news.

SirTeffy

Actually their website actually has a disclaimer stating clearly that “None of our staff are operating on ANY social media sites except YouTube.”

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

Oh? I must’ve missed that. That’s interesting, because the official Moby Dick Twitter linked to both these Twitter accounts, so I guess they’re more than happy to let the imitators join in on the trolling. :P

SirTeffy

Moby Dick doesn’t have ANY social media accounts except their YouTube. That’s what my post is trying to convey… There is no Moby Dick Twitter feed, it’s fake too.

*ANY* social media accounts, including on Facebook and Twitter, are fake EXCEPT their official YouTube page, according to the website. Anything else is just trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.

You can tell if it’s legit or not by checking beside their username, if it has a blue checkmark by it, the account has “Been Verified” by Twitter as legitimate. Generally this just requires some proof of identity, making it easy for legitimate people to do, but trolls generally don’t bother/can’t do it.

CirnoTheStrongest

If they were looking to pull a stunt, why would they ‘verify’ an account/s that were going to be deleted after the reveal anyway?

I’m not saying those accounts are real/trolls, I’m just saying that’s not the right way to determine it. We’ll only know once the truth has been revealed about it.

Although, it’s horribly obvious that it’s Metal Gear Solid V, because it literally says that during the trailer in text right above the ‘Phantom Pain’ thing, and no it’s not some ‘filling in the blanks’, that’s an actual font being used. It has its own borders and everything.

Visa Vang

Most win picture ever.

http://takopako.tumblr.com takopako

yup. i am completely expecting this to be a Kojima ploy that is actually a MGS project. i havent played the newer games(so i am clueless about coninuity), but i saw quickly saw snake in the main character and as soon as i saw the other guys’s butt, i thought raiden. lol.

Lexaus_the_Alchemist

I was surprised that this wasn’t gonna be for next-gen.

Come’on Koji- I mean, “Moby Dick Studios”, don’t ya know this gen has gone on for too long as it is… >.>

Brandon001

you say that as if this gen has carried on for 20 years, also, peeps like me cannot afford next gen consoles right now

Lexaus_the_Alchemist

I’m not saying I could right now either. I got my PS3 2.5 years in. I just to see them starting to move on.

neocatzon

Joakim says it’s not using FOX engine but WHALE engine and as strong as a whale.

Rohan Viajar

I know we’re all thinking this is kojima’s work

that aside. did everybody see the falling whale from the sky?
I just busted out laughing when I saw that.

whale- moby dick. …

Lexaus_the_Alchemist

Same. The whale just shows up from nowhere. Weird sequence, indeed.

OatMatadoQuatro

It’s Akiba Snake, the son of Johnny and Meryl. Sadly he suffers the same issues of his father so the stealth will be a lot harder in Metal Gear Solid V. If Kojima pulls more toilet jokes we will be a “sh!t bar” to know when Akiba needs a toilet.

michael

The dude looks like snake from metal gear solid

dashes

les enfants terribles project, my bet

Angel Rios

Random thought. What if that is Big Boss, the place he is in is Outer Heaven, it’s blowing up after Solid Snake defeats him at the end of Metal Gear, and the one wrapped in bandages is Frank Jaeger (Gray Fox)?

Willi Meyhoff

ok, I noticed something else no one seemed to see up until now.
at the VERY end, after the “MGS4 Flashback Effects” behind the soldier on the roof there’s a… Ghost? it looks like the reaper actually, it’s clothes all in black and long ripped sleeves.

http://twitter.com/monkeyking2135 monkey king

noone here maybe, the trailer has already be deconstructed to hell and back everywhere else when it was first “leaked”.

The floating “ghost” is the kid that’s standing in front of the elevator, and that kid seems to be kid psycho mantis.

Willi Meyhoff

yeah, I can imagine people watching the trailer frame by frame lol.

that definitely came to mind when I first saw him. He does give that feeling

ShawnOtakuSomething

looks like someone got some of Snakes DNA or… Big Boss is having a really bad day

konsama

That looks awesome, and looks like gameplay got heavy influence from PW animations. SO HYPE!

And i wonder, is it Solid Snake, Big Boss a new clone, or maybe Solidus?

That Ground Zeroes is the prelude of this doesn’t mean MGS5 is forcefully right after it. Especially knowing how kojima loves to tell stories without a exact order.

Farid Belkacemi

Still no platform (s) for this baby ?

Göran Isacson

So it’s a whole bunch of pills that’s flying around in the trailer during that weird “carcrash” sequence… eh, I still say it’s Big Boss journeying through Silent Hill in penance for his many wicked actions, until enough information surfaces that I am forced to change my mind. That, or a Guy Savage game where he fights burning whales. I could so get down with a game where you fight burning whales with hook swords.

Also, Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Pains… wonder if there just aren’t any people working in spell-check at Fox, or if Kojima can get away with questionable grammar because he’s Kojima.

Helepythia

In the meantime, has the Kojima Productions Podcast updated yet, or is it just me…that they’re 3 months behind.

Edzo

i wish websites would stop posting things like this when anyone with a brain knows its mgs5 and not some conspiracy

Syn

Most of the people on the site now its trolling(its already been confirmed as such), here on Siliconera we like to have fun, so they are just going along with it until Koji- I mean “Moby Dick” studios decides to give us all the proper details :)

CrimsonalCore

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Make senses.

Solomon_Kano

People have been speculating that this will be for Vita since this being MGS5 as MGSV doesn’t follow the series prior naming convention. I don’t think that’s good enough to go on, but there is something to look into in that regard here.

I think it’s worth noting that the images are pretty close to the Vita’s display dimensions at 960×540 (to the Vita’s 960×544). For the sake of comparison, the night’s other big names have seen screenshots released in 1280×720 (720p; The Last of Us) and 1920×1080 (1080p; Lords of Shadow 2).

This sticks out to me even more seeing that Konami’s only other game’s screens were released in 1080p. And we know this is from Konami. Why pick so arbitrary a display resolution as 960×540 for another game you’re displaying at the same event, were it also for consoles? That’s qHD. Unless Kojima’s pulling an even higher-tier troll than we’d all imagined and this is actually for high-end smartphones, it looks like we’ve been seeing KojiPro’s first Fox Engine Vita game.

Not really a foreign concept, either. Kojima was one of the Vita’s earliest public supporters back when it was still the NGP and he made a point to say that he believed the future was in an experience that you could begin in the home and take with you when you leave. To that end he introduced Transfarring in MGS HD, but that was only Step 2 of his plan — taking PS2 quality games on the go. Step 3 was to have games running on PS3 and Vita. It looks like this is it. That was also the time when he unveiled Fox Engine, and this so clearly runs on Fox. I don’t recall him ever outright saying Fox would run on Vita, but it makes sense.

“Moby Dick Studio unveils the world premiere trailer for “The Phantom Pain” at the 2012 Video Game Awards. All footage is shown running in real-time on hardware equivalent to current generation consoles (PS3 & XBOX360).”

I wouldn’t say Vita is exactly equivalent to PS3/360. So either they;re undecided on what consoles this is coming to yet, or they do know and they’re being coy.

Also, the screenshots on the official Moby Dick website are 1280x720px and the site clearly mentions the 360 and PS3. So again, I don’t think things like screenshot resolution matter much in this case.

The one reason this could be for Vita is that I don’t see them releasing two major Metal Gear Solid games for the 360 and PS3, and we know Ground Zeroes is already on its way. That leaves PC (unlikely), Wii U, phones/tablets and Vita as potential platforms, but again, the trailer says running on hardware equivalent to PS3/360.

Solomon_Kano

Ah. Screenshot thing is out then. My money’s on Moby Dick being coy though. As you said, having two MGS games on consoles in such close proximity is unlikely. Wii U is certainly possible, but it would be an odd choice to put out Ground Zeroes on PS360 and then The Phantom Pain on Wii U, assuming they’re meant to be of equal importance. Unless they’re taking note of Square Enix’s taste in early reveals, that would still be a close proximity release since both were revealed this year. A release on all 3 is possible, perhaps.

They never did confirm what systems Ground Zeroes would be for, after all, just that they were aiming for current gen with the possibility of changing. Maybe they pushed that to PS4/720 and this is for PS360? Unless, as someone suggested before the MGSV thing, this is just a really elaborate promo for Ground Zeroes.

At this point, I guess there’s not really any proof for this being on Vita one way or the other. The Vita certainly isn’t the PS360′s hardware equivalent even if it could possibly run PS3 games, as said by Kojima himself. Ah well, back to square one. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it does land there, but I’m in either way. Plus, it’s fun to speculate.

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